A conventional holding structure of an electronic component is disclosed, for example in a Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-188003. According to the holding structure of the electronic component disclosed therein, a resin spacer positions a Hall IC (a Hall effect element) as the electronic component. The Hall IC is arranged at a central portion of a gap as a magnetic flux detection gap portion defined in a stator core and terminals of the Hall IC are connected to a connector pin (a terminal) by using welding or the like. A connector housing is formed by resin-molding the Hall IC, the spacer, the stator core, and the connector pin as a single unit. The Hall IC is held at a predetermined position of the connector housing.
According to the above-described holding structure, the Hall IC and the spacer can be positioned relative to each other. However, it seems to be difficult to position the spacer (and the Hall IC) and the connector pin relative to each other for the following reasons. The spacer and the connector pin are assembled individually. In this case, a dimensional variation may be caused to each component and assembling errors may be further, caused when being assembled. Therefore, detecting precision of magnetic flux fluctuation by the Hall IC may be deteriorated due to displacement of the Hall IC in the connector housing.
Accordingly, the present invention therefore seeks to provide an improved holding structure of an electronic component and an improved method for holding the electronic component, whereby positioning precision for positioning the electronic component can be improved.